WIPO Director General Francis Gurry welcomed participants at a high-level workshop on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in India, hailing the country’s recent initiatives to create an empowering environment for intellectual property.

India’s Union Minister of Home Affairs, Shri Rajnath Singh, inaugurated the New Delhi meeting on August 22, 2017, with the participation of Commerce and Industry Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State, Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju.

Ms. Sitharaman “emphasized that people need to understand the ways to create and protect their intellectual property for a secure future,” according to an India government press release.

Mr. Rijiju “called upon people to respect others’ intellectual property and talked about creating a strong IPR enforcement mechanism in the country.”

For intellectual property to be an empowering mechanism, it has to provide business and industry with the tools to enable them to convert the fabled intellectual and cultural richness of India into economic wealth.

WIPO DG Francis Gurry

The three-day engagement held in New Delhi is designed to aide Indian enforcement authorities by establishing a platform to share knowledge on the enforcement of IP rights, boosting understanding and appreciation among the enforcement agency staff.

Transcript of DG Francis Gurry's remarks

Mr. Gurry said in his welcoming video message: “It is really an honor for me to have this opportunity to say a few words at the outset of the National Workshop on Enforcement and Intellectual Property. It is also a very great pleasure because it is part of the ever strengthening relationship between the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Government of India of which we at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are extremely proud.

In recent years, India has taken a number of, I would say, groundbreaking initiatives, both at the national and the international levels in the area of intellectual property. These initiatives have been aimed at creating an empowering environment for intellectual property in order to support in particular the Prime Minister’s initiatives for Make in India, Digital India and Start-Up India.

For intellectual property to be an empowering mechanism, it has to provide business and industry with the tools to enable them to convert the fabled intellectual and cultural richness of India into economic wealth. It also has to provide the tools to enable industry and commerce to prevent unfair and predatory practices that deprive creators, inventors and entrepreneurs of this possibility of converting the intellectual and cultural richness of India into commercial assets, into economic wealth.

All this is part of a fair, balanced and effective intellectual property system. We are absolutely delighted to learn that the National Workshop is taking place. Presence of three such distinguished ministers indicates that intellectual property is taken seriously and attention is paid to intellectual property at the highest level of the Indian Government. It also is an indication that this is a whole of Government approach with the executive, the legislative and the judicial and enforcement branches of Government all coming together to discuss this extremely important topic.

I wish you all extremely good deliberations and we truly hope that this will be another contribution that intellectual property can make to the policy of the Government of India, and in particular, to the creation of new India by 2022. Thank you once again for this opportunity to say a few words.”